Enlightenment Is Not The End

As a disciple of your Mystery School, I want to ask you the
following question:
When I heard you say that you were beyond enlightenment now, I felt
like a relaxation in my heart. That very moment a picture arose in
me showing me that you are even closer to us now, and it feels to me
as if I can somehow understand "beyond enlightenment" better than
enlightenment itself.
Can you please say something about this?

Adima, it raises a few fundamental questions.
First, if you cannot understand enlightenment, how can you
understand that which is beyond it? You are misunderstanding. Your
misunderstanding is that perhaps beyond enlightenment means below
enlightenment. And you are feeling happy, but I cannot feel happy
with your happiness. I feel sorry for it. You are feeling happy that
I have come close to you. You should feel happy when you come close
to me.
Just think: if I say that I have dropped even "beyond
enlightenment," that it was all fiction - enlightenment, beyond
enlightenment - that I am just one of you who had a few imaginative,
fictitious ideas, you will feel even happier. Now there is nothing
for you to worry about, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, you are
perfectly okay.
Your question makes me understand why Gautam Buddha remained with
enlightenment - although he was seeing it, the stars beyond were
calling him. He was the first man to see beyond enlightenment, but
he didn′t go beyond; he remained at the stage of enlightenment.
Perhaps it was for people like you. Because you will not be able to
understand the person who goes beyond enlightenment; in a way he
will become almost ordinary - and there is the danger. Your
ordinariness and his ordinariness are poles apart - but both are
ordinariness, and the danger is that you will misunderstand. He has
come back home. You have not even started the journey.
It is almost like meeting someone on a staircase - you are both
standing on the same step; one is going, one is coming. Both are on
the same step - in a way equal - but one is going up, one is going
down. Hence, they are not equal, their equality is illusory.
I thought perhaps that in the twenty-five centuries after Gautam
Buddha man might have become a little more intelligent - and someone
some day has to try going beyond and see what happens, how people
take it.
The way you have understood it is absolutely wrong. I have not come
closer to you, I have gone farther away.
And you cannot avoid enlightenment; if you avoid it, you cannot
reach beyond it. It is simple arithmetic. That′s what is making you
happy, that perhaps enlightenment can be avoided - when one has to
go beyond it, what is the need to first go to enlightenment and then
go beyond it? We are already beyond it!
You are not beyond it. You are behind it.
And in any case enlightenment cannot be avoided. One has to pass
through that fire, through that great experience. So drop that idea
that I have come closer to you. My being closer to you is not
significant. What is significant is your being closer to me.
You say, "Now you are a friend to us." I have always been a friend
to you. The question is from your side: are you a friend to me? And
my friendship will enhance and enrich my life, not your life. It is
your friendship that is going to enhance and enrich your life. And
if you can be a friend to one who is enlightened you have taken a
long jump, you have extended your hands for a faraway star, you have
stretched your being to its fullest. This will give you an
evolution.
And only after you have reached the point of enlightenment can you
see that there are skies beyond skies, that enlightenment is not the
end. Existence is not exhausted yet; there is still much more ahead,
the journey continues.